


force of nature/flat affect

by badacts



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Always Female Andrew Minyard, Always Female Neil Josten, F/F, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 02:23:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14274867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Life might have made Andrea a dangerous girl, but Mommy made her a killer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been chipping away on this project for a while, and I love it too much to leave it unfinished.
> 
> Warnings: this story covers the events of the series from Andrea's POV, so all standard warnings for the series apply. This fic is non-graphic in terms of rape and violence, but still contains these themes. Also, there's sex.

Andrea Minyard is the kind of girl men hate.

That’s fine with her – the ones who can’t tell that on sight she teaches to hate her soon enough. That’s the way she likes it.

She’s the girl all in black, the one with the sharp knife against both forearms. The one who is the fucking knife. A danger to herself and others, out of control: like she’s ever done anything unprovoked in her entire life. Like she’s ever done anything that wasn’t with someone else’s name on her lips, burned bright on the inside of her eyelids.

It’s just that people have funny ideas about reasonable force. They didn’t grow up like she did, of course. Danger breeds danger, and all of her earliest memories are soaked in it. It’s really no wonder that she turned out the way she has. _Psycho. Monster. Murderer._

That last sounds like it came straight from her sister’s mouth. Because life might have made Andrea a dangerous girl, but Mommy made her a killer.

 

* * *

 

Andrea is meant to be the one who ends things, not the one who starts them. But she’s the one who offers Kevin Day a deal when he crashes into the midst of the Foxes, with his broken hand and equally broken spirit.

He’s so scared. Andrea can’t bear him, for that or the brusque snarl of an expression he paints over it in his attempt to seem braver. She has no fondness for liars.

She remembers him telling her that she could make something of herself, though. She remembers him saying _you’re worth it_. She wants to keep him close so that when he fails to uphold his end of their bargain, she can punish him for it.

She never claimed not to be petty. For example:

“I won’t fuck you,” Andrea says, apropos nothing one night when they’re at the house in Columbia.

Kevin clearly hasn’t heard her come into the living room where he’s trying to get comfortable on the couch, because he jerks up so fast it must sober him. “I don’t-”

“I know you don’t. If you did, I’d have neutered you already.” She’s grinning, buzzing on crackers, but not joking. Not much, anyway. “But for the sake of clarity-”

“I get it,” Kevin says. He appears vaguely frightened by the suggestion. Andrea would think he was sensible enough to avoid women like her if she hadn’t seen Thea Muldani – that girl looks like a killer.

“You’re not as stupid as you look, then,” Andrea tells him, patting him on the shoulder. He actually flinches.

It’s lucky he’s more afraid of Riko than he is of her.

Kevin has barely had his dressing off his hand when someone manages to take a photo of the two of them in a grocery store near campus, half of Kevin’s tired face and Andrea’s bright-eyed grin turned to the camera. The media goes wild for Kevin Day and the woman he must be fucking, because God knows that men and women can’t be in close proximity without wanting to fuck.

Someone spray-paints ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘slut’ on the stadium walls over the weekend. Andrea looks them over and laughs – kids these days, thinking they’re so original. She can’t even remember the first person that called her a bitch, and for her that really is saying something.

The next week at practice Wymack comes into the lounge and dumps a plastic bag of letters on the desk. He says, “This is all hate mail.”

Dan, who’d been furious about the graffiti, says, “What the hell?” When she pulls one of them out, it’s addressed to Andrea by care of the court. So is the second, and the third.

“I’m not replying to them all, if that’s what you were hoping for,” Andrea says lazily from her spot on the couch.

Wymack’s expression is steadily unimpressed, but his gaze doesn’t waver from her face. “Some of these are death threats.”

She laughs. “How boring.”

“I’m involving the cops.”

“Go ahead.” Andrea can’t wait to see them pretend that they’re putting in the bare minimum effort.

“Thanks for your permission.” He looks away from her at last. At her side, Kevin is rigid. She elbows him hard enough in the ribs to bruise so that he squirms towards the arm of the couch in an attempt to escape.

She turns to look at him. He doesn’t look back. She croons, “Oh, Kevin. Is that fear or guilt I see?”

“Andrea, be quiet,” Wymack says.

“You’re no fun,” Andrea tells him before turning back to Kevin and stage-whispering, “Don’t you trust me?”

He doesn’t answer. It’s not a surprise.

 

* * *

 

Nina Josten is a pretty little problem with big eyes and some scars that she somehow still thinks she’s keeping a secret by changing in toilet stalls.

She doesn’t get it. She thinks she’s somehow carrying some special kind of burden, when she’s really just the same as the rest of them. Andrea wouldn’t give a fuck about her, if it weren’t for Kevin.

He’s interested in her the same way he is in Andrea, but Nina answers him with _yes_ every time Andrea says _no_. She’s caught up in him – not the pasted-on charm, but the real Kevin and his neuroses and fanaticism. The girl he picked up out of a desert shithole and thinks is destined for stardom, who puts so much on the line against Andrea on the court that she injures herself, who saw through their little airport pick up ruse and then was brave enough to call them on it.

Andrea is going to take her apart. If Kevin’s lucky, he’ll get her back in near enough to one piece.

 

* * *

 

Andrea dresses up as War for their trips to Eden’s Twilight, blood-stained mouth and black eyes, her clothes dark and tight enough to dare. It’s just so fitting. The only thing missing is her smile.

That’s what they like to tell her, anyway. Unfortunately her smile is court-mandated, and she never wears it to the club. More unfortunately for them, she’s never taken being told to smile very well.

She got reprimanded three times when she was bussing tables before the door guys started kicking out the sleazes instead. The world is full of slow fucking learners, but the Eden’s boys turned out to be quicker than most. The fact that they didn’t fire her says that well enough. That’s why she still comes here when they’re back in town, and not just because Rosa looks the other way when they slip shit into drinks.

Speaking of – pretty, gullible Nina is out there right now losing that nasty ability to lie, and Andrea has Rosa pressed against a wall in one of the break rooms out back, hands to wrists and mouth to mouth.

“It’d be easier for me to get you off if you gave me one hand back,” Rosa suggests archly against Andrea’s lips.

Andrea’s as sober as she ever gets these days, the crackers keeping her off of the floor. She doesn’t smile when she says, “You know the rules.”

The rules are _don’t fucking touch me_. Andrea is a simple soul.

“I know the rules,” Rosa repeats dutifully. “I’m just saying-”

“I wouldn’t,” Andrea suggests, her voice sweet and an unmistakeable warning. She silences Rosa with her flickering tongue, lets her distract her until her phone buzzes in her pocket.

It’s Nicki: _we have a problem._

She probably should have already realised that. “I need to deal with this.”

“With _her_ , you mean?” Rosa says. “She’s pretty. Don’t know what she did to you.”

Andrea shoots her a flat look and leaves. It doesn’t take her that long to find the others even in the teeming masses – they’ve backed off, hoping to avoid fists.

Alicia is bleeding from a split lip. Andrea might have to punish Nina for that.

“She’s really fighty,” Nicki says, less than sober herself. Someone from over her shoulder mutters _fucking fucked up white girls_ but looks away when Andrea stares them in the face.

Someone is holding Nina up – some busboy whose name Andrea has never asked – and trying to avoid her fists at the same time. After watching for a second, Andrea says, “she can’t fight,” and wades in to take charge of her.

She might not know the busboy’s name, but he seems to know who Andrea is – he lets go of Nina the second he sees her. “She asked me to knock her out and went after me when I wouldn’t.”

Smart of her. Pity busboys in this town apparently have a misplaced sense of chivalry. Andrea says, “Fuck off.”

Nina is swaying on her feet, but that doesn’t stop her from charging Andrea with an arm upraised. Andrea catches it and uses her own momentum against her, twisting it up hard behind her back.

It puts them spine to chest, Nina heaving, intimate except not. Andrea says, “You can’t really have thought that would work.”

“Fuck you,” is the reply she gets, when is precisely when Nina’s knees fold and she collapses so fast Andrea nearly dislocates her shoulder anyway.

 

* * *

 

Nina talks up a good story about running for her life, about her dead parents and the people she’s running from. None of that stops her from looking at Riko Moriyama across a TV set and tearing him to shreds with that sweetly smiling mouth.

“Fuck,” Matt says, half impressed and half horrified. His hand is sealed tight over Andrea’s wrist, tethering her while Wymack cuffs her other side, and Renee is a heavy weight in her lap. Shackles and chains. Andrea is the girl in the movie, hand sealed over her mouth to stop her from screaming, except she’s also the killer.

Riko does an excellent job of pretending to be unbothered by Nina – clearly he got the same media training Kevin did, down to the part where they both have cracks in the smile when you look close enough. The difference is that lurking under Kevin’s mask is a boring addict, and under Riko’s is a violent psychopath.

The lights go down. Renee and Wymack let go. Matt, who is a touch slower, nearly gets his shoulder dislocated when Andrea wrenches out of his grip.

Someone shouts at her when she swings up onto the edge of the stage, but she doesn’t stop. She only just makes it around the curtain in time to stop Nina backpedalling onto the stage with Riko behind her.

“Hi kids,” she says through her smile. Riko jerks to a halt looking for the source of that voice – low, like honey whiskey, and absolutely nothing like what should come from Andrea Minyard’s mouth. The attempt at a smile falls off when he recognises her. “Riko. Long time, no see.”

“Minyard,” Riko says, all revulsion. He always seems to forget that there are two of them.

Nina isn’t a complete idiot. She circles around Riko and drags Kevin away, leaving Andrea and Riko alone.

“You really shouldn’t touch things that don’t belong to you,” she says to him, silk and the serpent under it, almost close enough to touch. She’ll break his arm if he tries and he knows it.

“You are involving yourself in things that have nothing to do with you,” he warns, voice without any of the smiling sociopathy. On anyone else, it would be a more serious threat. On him, it means he’s shaken.

She grins. “A girl has to have a hobby.”

 

* * *

 

Seth dies, which is inconvenient for Andrea. Seth is actually murdered, which is a bad, bad sign for Nina considering how she’s apparently meant to be hiding on the Fox line.

“So can you hold the line or can’t you?” Wymack asks Andrea afterwards, asking for the impossible in dead seriousness, like he can exchange that for a bottle of booze.

“Guess we’ll see,” Andrea tells him with a shrug and a smile. She's already done the hard work of giving Allison the fight to be here, so what's another impossible thing.

The judge who sentenced her was very intent on telling her that if she’d been a man, she would have landed her ass in jail way back when. He made it sound like the drugs were a kindness, like it wasn’t halfway to a death sentence for a girl like her to be an addict. She’d taken it, and kept taking it, which is actually an ongoing theme in her life.

She walks out onto the court of their first away game still high, and nearly has to be carried off of it. Her first port of call is the aforementioned booze, and her medication. Washed down with Blue perhaps isn’t what her court psych would have recommended, but she’s not dead yet, and what Bee doesn't know won't hurt her.

Nina follows her – or maybe Wymack, Andrea’s companion making sure she doesn’t get alcohol poisoning – and of course she can’t resist pulling Andrea up. “How did you know he was going to go for the corner?”

Andrea taps her head by her ear with hands that aren’t shaking. “Coach said that’s his fallback. Under that much pressure, I knew he would go for the same shot.”

Kevin owes her a new racquet, except she doesn’t let him buy her anything besides alcohol.

Nina’s expression shifts, her mouth opening before she realises she doesn’t have anything to say to that. She closes it at the same time she drops her arm and lets Andrea go.

 

* * *

 

Renee is a brutal taskmaster. She is also extremely adept at sweet-talking the truth out of people, and even better at just talking it out of people.

“Thank you for inviting us all to Halloween,” she says, when they’re lying on the carpet of the room they spar in. Or, more accurately, where Andrea is lying, trying to ease oxygen back into her lungs, and Renee is sitting cross-legged and just out of reach.

It’s too late for this. Andrea can go forever when she’s high, but the wind-down to sleep is her designated daily crash. Maybe that’s why she does it.

“I didn’t invite you,” Andrea corrects her.

“Then thank you for agreeing to let us come,” Renee says. “Allison is really excited.”

“I don’t care.”

Renee ignores this. “Nina asked Matt about what happened. I don’t think she was surprised.”

“She wouldn’t be.” She’d lived through something similar, after all. The difference is that she didn’t want it, and Matt wanted nothing more.

Renee tilts her head, her gaze seven tons of concrete on the side of Andrea’s face. “You like her.” It’s not a question.

Andrea laughs. “I would have to be very stupid to trust her.”

“I never said anything about trust,” is the whip-quick response. What was Andrea just saying about stupidity? “You and I both know that ‘like’ and ‘trust’ aren’t mutually inclusive.”

That’s true. Renee is a rare example of someone Andrea both likes and trusts. She can count the others she feels the same about on one hand without running out of fingers.

“I don’t trust her and I don’t like her,” Andrea replies. It may as well be true. She isn’t stupid. “Are we done with this yet?”

Renee hums. “Alright.” It sounds like she’s humouring Andrea. “Another round?”

Andrea takes stock. Her forearms are going to be blue tomorrow under her armbands, and her ribs are killing her. “Yes.”

No one ever survived by stopping when it hurt, after all.

 

* * *

 

In a pretty house in suburban Columbia, Andrea walks straight into a trap.

“Oh, mercy,” Maria says afterwards, her quaking hand held up to her mouth. Her wedding band glints in the light, the same colour as the cross around her throat.

“Mercy?” Andrea chokes on her own giggles to get the words out, blood bubbling salt and copper on her lips. “Haven’t you heard that bitch is dead?”

 

* * *

 

Betsy can surprise her. Case in point:

“I’m going to make the case for your prescription to be cancelled.”

Andrea pauses in reaching for the shelf, lowers her hand. Smiles. “That’s interesting.”

“With immediate effect,” Bee continues. “We’ll follow the same program we planned for the summer. It’ll just be moved up.”

Detox, rehab, doctors and lawyers and counsellors. Andrea can hardly wait. Except –

“No,” she says.

None of them look particular surprised by that. There’s a veritable council of individuals all with their differing opinions of what she should do, and she has to care about precisely one of them.

“We can keep Kevin safe,” Wymack says.

Andrea laughs. Everyone in the room winces.

“Give him to me,” Nina says in German, interrupting everything just like she usually does.

Wymack shuts his mouth. Abby opens hers but says nothing. All wise choices. Andrea looks at them and then looks to Nina, who is standing expectantly at Kevin’s side like she already belongs there.

There’s one problem with that. Andrea imbues every trace of doubt in her voice and says, “Trust _you_? Nina Josten, the rabbit playing at being a Fox?”

“Then don’t trust Nina,” Nina says. “Trust me.”

Andrea looks her up, down. “And who exactly are you?”

“My mother called me Sarah when she wanted to protect me. If you have to call me anything, call me that.”

“And look how the both of you ended up.”

Nina’s mouth quirks, not a smile. “Like you have room to talk.”

Well, she isn’t wrong. Andrea says, “I suppose it will have to do.”

 

 

* * *

 

She comes back to a Fox Tower that is all the same apart from Nina’s two black eyes and the careful way she walks, whispering of far more damage under her clothes.

They meet in the stairwell, Andrea leaning against the wall and looking down, down, and tasting nicotine after weeks without. Nina pauses beside her, eyes bright blue and hair a far more brash auburn than Andrea has ever seen it. She doesn’t protest when Andrea backs her into the wall.

“You aren’t very careful, are you,” Andrea says. It’s not a question.

“I do what I have to,” Nina replies. She’s one hundred percent solid, blindingly real under the halogen stairwell lights.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you were keeping your promise, or whether I broke mine.”

“I was never going to hold you to your end of the deal while you had no chance of keeping it anyway,” Nina replies. “But actually, it was neither.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Andrea warns.

Actually, there is something else different in Fox Tower. It’s her, stripped down. Not literally, but with all her artifice peeled back through lack of care, the sheath off and the blade exposed. She sees the flicker of Nina recognising that passing across her face.

“I’m not lying,” she says. “I spent Christmas in Castle Evermore.”

Nina shouldn’t be able to surprise Andrea, but Nina also shouldn’t be real, so Andrea should probably stop trying to predict anything at this point.

“So I suppose that bandage on your face is hiding a love tap and not a tattoo,” she says.

Nina pulls off the tape without a wince, flashing the number on her cheek. “Guess again.”

Andrea reaches out and pinches Nina’s jaw between her finger and thumb. Nina lets her. “You are even stupider than you look.”

Nina, her head turned obligingly away, smiles a touch. “You cut your hair.”

“And you dyed yours.”

“I didn’t do it myself,” Nina corrects. “This was a condition.”

“Of?”

“Me being allowed to come back.”

Andrea jerks her chin back around, less than gentle. Nina flinches but doesn’t break her gaze when their eyes meet. “I hope the trip was worth it.”

“You tell me,” Nina replies. She’s serious as death all of a sudden, mouth curving down.

“Excuse me?”

“Riko said if I didn’t, your doctor would-”

“Ah,” Andrea interrupts, a little sharp. “Nina. Or Sarah, was it? Don’t concern yourself with issues that have nothing to do with you.”

Nina’s expression, usually measured, is a real journey. Andrea doesn’t know why she’s surprised – it’s not as though she doesn’t know how Riko works, at this point. Underestimating him – or overestimating the likelihood of him keeping his word – is frankly idiotic.

“He made it about me,” she says, low and intent.

“You think everything is about you,” Andrea replies. “It’s a character flaw of yours.”

“Andrea-”

“Our deal stands. Next time someone comes for you, get out of the way and let me deal with it.”

“So what? I was just supposed to ignore him?” She’s awfully wound up. “How could I look at myself in the mirror afterwards?”

“Your mental state isn’t my concern. Only your survival,” Andrea tells her. She knows better than picking fights she can’t win, for a start.

“Do you think that isn’t mutual?”

She’s serious. Andrea isn’t entirely sure what to make of that, but she doesn’t like it.

“You can’t keep me alive,” Andrea tells her.

“And you can’t stop me from trying to,” Nina replies, jaw firm with stubbornness.

Andrea looks her over, black and blue, all misplaced loyalty that Andrea can’t even classify as blind. Nina’s stupidity doesn’t extend as far as Andrea wishes it did. The question of whether it is even stupidity is a debate that Andrea doesn’t care to entertain.

“You weren’t meant to be real,” Andrea says, which is as good as an admission.

“Last I checked, you thought I was at least fifty per cent fake,” Nina says.

“It was the hair,” Andrea says, rather than _it was the drugs._

Nina’s mouth twists. “Well, this is all me.”

Nina Sarah Josten. Whatever ‘this’ is, Andrea can’t fucking stand it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD I finally finished this :'''''')
> 
> A warning for mentions of CSA, injuries and torture.
> 
> Me while changing the things characters did in canon that I didn't like: girls are smarter than boys so this is in character :)

It annoys Andrea very much, how perceptive Wymack can be. That’s her first thought when Nina lets herself onto the court in the middle of a practice she isn’t allowed to take part in.

She looks odd, still short-stepping like her body isn’t easy with the movement, obviously hurt to anyone with eyes despite the double-layers of concealer. Andrea plants her racquet on the court floor and watches her not-limp across to the goal.

“What did they do to you?” Nina asks, when she’s close enough that no one else can overhear her.

“What didn’t they do?” Andrea deliberately misconstrues. Nina rolls her eyes elaborately, because sympathy is for the upperclassmen and other more socially adjusted people, probably. Andrea wouldn’t know.

“I meant Kevin and Dan,” Nina says. “One of them is going to get hurt. What are you playing at?”

“I’m having fun,” Andrea says, dead-flat. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I’m changing my expectations,” Nina replies. The tilt of her mouth is perfectly sardonic. “I don’t care if you’re having fun. I just care if you play well enough for us to beat the Ravens, and also that you don’t break any of our teammates.”

Andrea tilts her head. “Does that count as raising the bar, or lowering it?”

“Definitely lowering,” Nina replies immediately. “What is it going to take?”

“What makes you think you have something to offer that I’m interested in?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Maybe Andrea should be concerned by that phrase, and by Nina’s expression, but she’s not so interested in reasonable fear. She taps the grille of her helmet over her chin with a gloved finger like she’s considering. “I want to see your scars.”

The reaction that gets isn’t particularly surprising. Nina’s face goes from her version of playful to frigid in a split-second. What is surprising is that, after an extended moment, she bites out, “Fine.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Don’t be obtuse,” Nina replies. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“You should take your own advice,” Andrea says, not smiling, and then before Nina can keep talking, “It’s a deal.”

On Friday she brings the clothes she picked out and Nicki picked up, letting herself in Nina’s suite. Nina’s in the bedroom, lying on her bed, and her only movement when Andrea enters if the flicker of her eyes.

“Lock the door,” she says, which is how Andrea discovers she’s installed a definitely-against-regulations deadbolt on the bedroom door. “Matt put it in. I think he thought it would make me feel safer.”

“Does it?” Andrea asks, but does as bid. There’s rustling of fabric against fabric, and by the time she turns around Nina is on her feet and out of her shirt.

Her bra is utilitarian, a white and grey sports style. Her expression is bland-over-challenging, and her skin is a ruin.

Andrea knows from scars. She systematically ruined herself even as she was saving her own life, and in this case ‘systematic’ is the defining word. Nina’s scars are all trauma, uneven and clearly inflicted by other people.

“That’s from a bullet,” Andrea notes, pointing with her eyes to the divot at Nina’s hip.

“I told you people were after me,” Nina replies.

Andrea circles her, nothing the marks from knives, the uneven patterning of a deep abrasion down one shoulder, the blue and green of the bruises from Evermore across her ribs. Around the scars, Nina’s skin is the unhealthy blue-pale of milk, but smooth. Probably soft. Nina doesn’t turn her head to watch Andrea’s progress, but Andrea can read the tightness in her back and shoulders, the way she balances her weight towards the balls of her feet.

“My father was violent, but he was always careful not to leave a permanent mark,” Nina says into the quiet. “Men don’t like girls with skin anything less than perfect. It was only after I ran that everyone stopped caring about leaving scars.”

“And Riko?”

“He wanted to keep me pretty,” is the reply, bitten into an upwards-curved lower lip, “At first.”

“The tattoo,” Andrea says, or maybe asks.

“He said it was lucky I could play, because I’m not good for anything else anymore.” Nina looks satisfied by that. In a distant way, Andrea can understand the feeling.

 

* * *

 

There’s one more thing Andrea apparently missed while she was gone. That’s why she’s in the bedroom, perched on her desk and blowing smoke through the cracked window, when Alicia comes in mid-afternoon like she always does on a Tuesday.

She feels Alicia’s eyes on her, but nothing is said until Andrea herself says, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Alicia doesn’t bother denying it. “Well, you weren’t going to fuck him, so I figured someone should.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Because it looks like an awkward teenager-ish dance to Andrea.

“That’s what we _were_ doing,” Alicia replies. “I think he’s scared you’re going to cut his dick off for looking at me now that you’re back.”

Andrea considered it, when she realised. The thing is, she can’t quite reconcile that – for once she’s at war between two separate deals, the one with Kevin and the one with her twin.

“I suppose you wouldn’t like him anymore without it,” she comments, her tone bland enough that even she can barely tell whether that’s an insult to Alicia or to Kevin.

“I’ll just buy him a new one,” Alicia replies, her tone civil and utterly unmatched to the viciousness curling in her mouth. “I’m not breaking your rules. Not any more than you are. At least I don’t _care_ about him.”

“Don’t you?” Andrea asks blandly.

“No,” Alicia replies. “I’m not stupid.”

Andrea has always known that the two of them are more similar than anyone, including Alicia herself, give them credit for. This is not really how she expected it to be confirmed.

 _I’m self-destructive, not stupid_.

“No, you aren’t,” Andrea tells her. “You’re like me. A clever girl.” It’s not a complement, and they both know it.

“If you’re right and I’m anything like you, then we’re both fucking idiots,” Alicia snaps just before she storms out.

 

* * *

 

Andrea doesn’t know what her first thought is, but it’s closely followed by the acknowledgement that she’s seen more than enough blood spatter in the last six months.

“Fuck!” Alicia exclaims, catching the edge of the spray. Nina doesn’t say anything, motionless for a long moment before she digs her fingers into the sopping mess of her locker, face splashed in red. Nicki turns and screams before slapping a hand over her mouth.

Andrea is there in a second, tugging Nina aside and checking her for a source for the blood. Nina seems to realise what she’s looking for, because she stutters, “Door was rigged,” and reaches across Andrea’s shoulder to wrench an empty plastic bag from where it’s been secured to the top of the locker.

The locker room door slams open and Abby barrels inside, and then upon seeing the blood shouts, “David!”

Wymack follows her in a moment later, face furious. “What the fuck?”

Nina drops the bag on the floor with a sickly slap. “It’s – it’s some kind of prank. I need to wash my gear-”

“She’s fine,” Andrea says, stepping aside, which is when she hears the gulping whistle of someone trying to breathe but failing, and Renee says, “Alicia, exhale.”

“Everyone who’s clean, out,” Wymack commands. No one moves. “Now!” The upperclassmen go, dragging a protesting Nicki along with them.

Nina’s neuroses aren’t Andrea’s problem. Her problem is apparently her sister, blind-eyed and hunched in the corner, saying her name. She pushes Renee aside and inserts herself in front of Alicia, and says, “Breathe.”

Alicia reaches out and pats down the front of Andrea’s shirt, hands clumsy. “Are you…”

“Breathe,” Andrea repeats, and this time Alicia gasps an exhalation. Her next indrawn breath is more measured, rather than a desperate whoop.

“What’s,” she says, and then snatches her hands off of Andrea.

Abby is hovering over Andrea’s shoulder, so she holds out a hand and clicks her fingers until Abby gets with the program and hands her a towel that someone has left slumped on the bench. Andrea uses it to roughly wipe off Alicia’s face and arm, and then manhandles her out of her blood-dotted shirt. Abby passes her a jacket, which Alicia manages to fumble into herself.

“I need to,” Alicia says, and pushes herself up before stumbling towards the door. Andrea supposes Nicki will catch her before she bolts.

Meanwhile, the others are coming out of the showers, and Wymack is saying, “This is not a conversation. The game is postponed and I’m calling the cops.”

“I’m not talking to them,” Nina says. When Andrea flicks her a glance, all the surprise is off her face, replaced by pure stubbornness. “It’s a stupid prank.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Wymack replies. “And maybe it is, but I’m not willing to put an entire crowd in danger that it’s more than that, never mind my team. Change and get out.”

Nina looks down at herself, and then at her locker, which is still oozing blood. “Change into what?”

 

* * *

 

Nina is stupid, but she can learn.

Andrea kisses her, helpless not to, and then stops herself because that’s not her, she’s not them, Nina is a victim but still doesn’t understand that Andrea needs more than a dazed look.

Half of her expects to never hear anything about it again, partly because Nina’s a rabbit and partly because Nina says she doesn’t swing. The other half isn’t surprised when Nina slips the lock on Andrea’s suite, shutting out both the others.

She gets within arms reach and pauses, down on one knee. The room is mostly dark, but her eyes glint in the light from the muted television. “You said you were looking for a yes. Can I change my answer?”

Andrea doesn’t twitch, despite the tender vulnerability of Nina’s height not quite over her, the press of her back into the stupid-but-comfortably beanbag. “It depends on why.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Nina licks her lips, not artifice for once. Andrea lied months back when she said honesty looks terrible on her.

“You still have to say it,” Andrea replies.

“Because I want you to,” Nina says almost immediately. “If you don’t-”

Andrea pushes herself more upright, feet to the floor. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Nina says, steady and intense, and Andrea puts her on her back on the carpet, follows her down.

They’re very different – Andrea has muscle where Nina is lean lines and natural curves cut down into a runner’s build. Andrea keeps space between their bodies, circling Nina’s slender wrists with one of hers and pressing them to the carpet above Nina’s head. She doesn’t hold on. Nina stays lax, eyes hooded and fixed on Andrea’s face, plush lips gently parted.

“I thought you’d be more aggressive, considering,” she says after a moment.

“Did you?” Andrea murmurs.

“Andrea,” Nina says, less question and more command, “ _Yes_.”

She doesn’t know how to kiss, but she can learn that too.

 

* * *

 

Andrea and Alicia are both right about the stupidity of Minyards. Or, they’re both wrong. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe it does. Either way they take a chair each across the desk from Betsy, one here because she needs it and one here because Kevin Day has apparently blackmailed her into it.

Next time Alicia tries to pretend that Kevin doesn’t mean anything to her, Andrea might just throw this in her face.

“It’s good to see you, Alicia,” Betsy says. Alicia doesn’t reply, staring pointedly at the wall behind Betsy’s head. “I’m a little surprised, but pleased.”

“I wouldn’t be,” Andrea says. “She’s only here so her fuck buddy won’t become her ex-fuck buddy.”

Alicia, impressively, doesn’t say anything. Betsy waits a moment before saying, “I’m sure that’s an oversimplification, but even if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be the worst reason I’ve heard for attending an appointment.”

At that, Alicia’s focus moves from the wall to Betsy’s face. She sneers, “She’s right.”

Betsy doesn’t twitch. “As I said, it’s not the worst reason I’ve ever heard.”

Andrea is familiar with the concept of playing the long game. The proof is basically sitting next to her, or perhaps in a grave an hour’s drive away. She’s also used to the idea of ruination, of never getting anything, which is why she opens her mouth and says, “Actually, it’s because I killed her mother.”

Betsy could probably pick up her phone right now and have Andrea arrested. She probably won’t. It’s not belief that makes her think that, but a lack of concern combined with the twisting need to bring everything to a head at last – Alicia’s non-existent faith and Andrea’s immovability, or maybe Nina’s certainty that this could do anything at all and Andrea’s sick hope that she might, somehow, be right.

Alicia says, “You can’t even pretend to be sorry, can you?”

“Why would I be? I warned you what would happen if she touched you again.”

“We were sixteen years old. How was I supposed to know you meant what you said?”

“I warned you,” Andrea says. “If you didn’t believe me, that’s your problem, not mine.”

Alicia has been boring a hole in Betsy’s desk with her eyes, but she finally turns. “You know, I used to think the same things about you as everyone else. That you’re crazy, or out of control. And then I smashed that bastard’s head in, and I kind of understood it, you know that? The shit you do, it’s to protect people.

“But you know why I never understood it before? All that righteousness, all those proclamations of honesty, but you never explained anything. You just said things and expected me to understand when you knew there was no way I could. And now I do understand, and I’m still so fucking angry.”

“Alicia,” Betsy says quietly. Andrea hasn’t forgotten she’s there, but by the way Alicia jumps she might have. It doesn’t stop her, like the dam has burst.

“We were sixteen,” she says again. “Did you really think you were protecting me from anything that hadn’t already happened?”

Truthfully, Andrea tries not to think about that. “It can always get worse.” Despite herself, her voice is a low simmer.

“I was a teenage drug addict whose mother hit her and never cared enough to check her boyfriends weren’t paedophiles.” Alicia looks her right in the eye as she says it, and Andrea wears the hit without a flinch. “But you’re right. I could have killed someone.”

“Is that why you’re angry?” Betsy asks. She’s not writing anything, not recording either. Somehow, Andrea suspects this session might be burned into her memory.

“No,” Alicia replies. “I’m angry because I’m still sitting here anyway.”

The quiet hangs. It looks like Alicia has exhaled a touch. Andrea suspects that the both of them are surprised when Betsy says, “Being here is a good start.”

 

* * *

 

She stands outside the door to Nina’s suite for too long before she takes a hand from her pocket and knocks quietly twice. It’s not nerves. It’s something else, probably. Five more years of therapy and maybe she’ll know for sure.

Nina opens the door and ushers Andrea in immediately, relaxed and unsurprised, perhaps a touch curious. Usually it’s Nina who follows Andrea’s lead, seeking her out and waiting for an invitation into her space.

“Matt’s out,” she says, as though Andrea isn’t already extremely aware of this. She’s not here to see Matt. She does steal one of his beers from the fridge, though she pours it down the drain rather than drinking it. Nina watches this happen without comment, hip hitched on the edge of the bench.

Eventually she raises an eyebrow. “Did you want something in particular?”

Instead of answering, Andrea kisses her. Nina adjusts, easy as breathing and again unsurprised, and then sinks into her.

Her body is interesting. Andrea runs her fingers under her shirt and over the curves of her hip and waist, earning a small shudder in response. Her skin is very soft, and Andrea can feel the fingertip-fine old scars, and the heavier, newer ones like bands.

Andrea bumps her wrist into Nina’s where she’s clasped her fingers behind her back, and then takes hold of them to transfer them to her neck. Nina only pauses for a second before pushing her fingers in Andrea’s hair, caught in the sensation.

It’s okay. Not too much. Andrea doesn’t want to consider that too hard, doesn’t want to give her brain an excuse to turn something simple into something triggering. She drowns the thoughts by pushing her fingers under the waistband of Nina’s sweats at the same time as she kicks her feet wider.

Nina makes a soft noise, a cut-off whimper, and if Andrea wasn’t already wet then she certainly is now. She’s not the only one – Andrea’s exploratory fingers find Nina just as slick. She strokes over the petal-soft folds and the burr of hair, wishing she could get Nina’s clothes off but knowing that it would be too much for her if not for Nina.

“Yeah,” Nina says thoughtlessly, rocking into Andrea’s fingers like she’s desperate for the touch.

Andrea curves her fingers inside, fucking her without much in the way of gentleness while her thumb presses Nina’s clit. It makes Nina quake and curl her grip tighter and tighter into Andrea’s hair, gasping into her mouth. Andrea kisses her firm and wet, wishing it was her mouth between Nina’s thighs instead.

And she looks impossible riding Andrea’s hand through the last of the aftershocks, her lush mouth parted on an exhale and a flush creeping up her throat. It’s that she’s here at all – that she’s permitting Andrea’s touch, and that Andrea is letting her this close to start with.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

“Go away,” Andrea tells her after, watching the flicker of her eyes that looks too much like understanding. When she’s gone Andrea brings herself off the same way, quick and brutal, and if she licks the taste of Nina off of her hand then she’s the only one who knows about it.

 

* * *

 

Andrea likes to win. It just doesn’t happen to her very often.

She’d half wondered when the Ravens destroyed them back in October whether they were done, for good this time. She suspects it was Kevin’s fledgling belief in them that’s pulled them this far, combined with Dan’s iron will and Nina’s obsessive focus. But whatever it is, they started the spring season running and don’t stop.

“We need you to control the score,” Nina says in Binghamton, eyes bright and focussed. She’s always pared back in a way that other people aren’t – maybe an effect of all the lying – but there’s an electricity to her when she’s in gear that makes her utterly real. “Can you do that?”

“Not for free,” Andrea replies.

“Whatever you want,” Nina replies, easy as blinking. It’s only the intensity in her expression that gives her away.

One day one of them isn’t going to be able to fulfil their end of a deal. Andrea, already cut loose on the bus trip here, isn’t going to be the one to start.

 

* * *

 

Andrea knows before she finds Nina’s bag that something has happened to her. And she’s not the only one, either.

“Let me go look for her,” Matt says, face tense, almost pressing Wymack into the bus door. Andrea doesn’t bother asking for permission – she hits the emergency release around the bulk of their bodies and barges her way out.

She’s already bruised to shit. It’s cathartic to hit a few stragglers on her way back across the parking lot, her fists all bright-pain that threatens broken bones if she doesn’t find her restraint.

She doesn’t find any self-control. She finds Nina’s duffel, and her phone in the pocket, and the countdown in the inbox along with an incoming call in the log timed just right to coincide with her showering alone. It’s confirmation of what she already knew – Nina hasn’t run. Someone has taken her.

Girls like them go missing all the time. Usually they don’t come home, unless it’s in a body bag.

When she climbs back onto the bus, she drops Nina’s bag onto the empty front seat. “She’s gone.”

“We’re trying hospitals now,” Renee says. “Matt and Allison need to go anyway.”

“You won’t find her there,” Andrea says. She tosses the phone to Renee, ignoring the way her fingers sting from holding on.

Renee looks through it, and then says, “It could be a coincidence.”

Kevin, leaning over her shoulder to look, goes white. Andrea says, “It’s not.”

 

* * *

 

Wymack gets the call when they’re already in Baltimore, stepping into the corner of the room for a semblance of privacy. That works precisely as long as he keeps his voice at a normal level.

Even hearing one side of the conversation, it’s obvious that Nina is alive, though potentially not in one piece. Andrea, her bones pressing tight to her skin all over and her tongue still tasting blood, doesn’t relax. She may have forgotten how.

When Wymack hangs up, he looks at all of their attentive faces, not quite inscrutable enough, and then says, “Andrea. You’re coming with me.”

There’s a lot of loud protesting – the others all want to come, despite that none of them know where they’re going or what they’re going to find there. Andrea ignores them and pushes herself up, rechecking her pockets for both her phone and Nina’s, fully-charged.

There’s already a dark-coloured SUV parked downstairs at the motel, yet another suited agent waiting for them. He gives Andrea a hard look but when he opens his mouth, Wymack interrupts with a tired, “Don’t bother.”

Andrea doesn’t know Baltimore, but she watches it pass by through the window with the knowledge that this is, at least in part, the city that made Nina who she is, and that she would probably know the sights herself. It’s not a familiar feeling.

They go to a hospital, and the agent driving them leads them straight to an elevator to the fifth floor and then down the hall. Only one of the doors has an armed man sitting on a chair outside it. Andrea heads for that door without stopping, catching sight of a familiar figure in the bed inside before a hand to her wrist pulls her to a stop.

“Just wait a minute,” the owner of the hand says. “Who the hell is this?”

“Let go of her,” Wymack warns through his teeth. Andrea tenses, ready to fight, and –

“Andrea!” Nina exclaims from inside, and then bursts into tears at the sight of her.

The grip slips, and Andrea is through the door in a second. Nina, covered in bandages, raises a hand to her face to shield the fact that, despite the tears on her cheeks, she’s smiling a little bit.

It’s too much. Andrea has always known precisely how Nina ticks, the extent of her subtle manipulations in contrast to Andrea’s own harsher, sexier ones, but it’s different to see it when, after all this time, she’s become used to Nina’s honesty.

Her thighs bump against the edge of the bed. She’s prickling all over, barely restrained, and it’s lucky the door guard let her go because she’s primed for violence.

Nina seems to recognise that. When Andrea bends and rests half her weight on a fist on the mattress, her fingers are tentative against the fabric of Andrea’s hoodie. The faint amusement has faded entirely in favour of uncertainty.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and somehow Andrea doesn’t hit her. “I couldn’t…they were waiting for me.”

“Who was waiting, Natasha?” An unfamiliar voice asks from the door. Andrea stiffens, but her body is already between the owner and Nina.

Nina flicks a look to the door and then switches to German. “My father’s men. Did Kevin tell you?”

“Eventually,” Andrea replies in the same language. "Natasha?"

“Natasha Sarah Wesninski," Nina answers, rueful. "I was a third honest."

Andrea has a feeling that's going to be an ongoing theme the next few days. "Your father's men were at the stadium."

"They would have killed all of you,” she continues. “They don’t care about collateral damage. I couldn’t let that happen. So I went with them, and now…my father’s dead.”

“Did you kill him?”

She laughs. “I wish.”

“What happened to your face?”

“Dashboard lighter.” She shrugs. “A knife. I’m not as pretty as I used to be.” It’s a bad joke that might just barely come off because Nina isn’t vulnerable that way, but Andrea’s not in the mood to hear it.

“They want to take me away,” Nina murmurs. “Put me in witness protection.”

Her face says, as clear as day, _don’t let them_. It confuses Andrea for a moment that she doesn’t say the words out loud, even protected by a different language.

“If you tell me to, I’ll go,” Nina continues, which is a different kind of concept entirely.

“They can’t have you,” Andrea tells her. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

 

* * *

 

In a dark room in the mountains, with a damaged girl who won’t look away, Andrea loosens the rein a little. She gets on her hands and knees over Nina, kisses her until her lips buzz and burn, undresses her more capably than she can do so herself with her hurting hands.

She tastes too fucking good, moves so sweet at the application of Andrea’s mouth and fingers. She keeps her moans muffled by her own hand and Andrea wants to hear her, but she doesn’t pause to tell her that. She just takes her apart.

Andrea doesn’t let Nina touch her, not beyond the fragile permitted arc of hands to hair and neck and shoulders. She isn’t sure if it’s nerves or lack of knowledge or something else that keeps Nina’s hands from straying, but she thinks she might know. It’s just not something she’s encountered much before.

They share a bed. Andrea can still sleep. She wakes to Nina’s healing face and the fall of her rats-nest hair over the pillows, the pinch of a frown between her eyebrows, and is careful not to wake her when she gets up.

Something’s shaken loose, and it’s only now that she realises that it’s been rattling for a long time – since the beginning of the year, or near enough. It doesn’t feel like relief – actually, it feels a little bit too much like falling.

“We’re going to win,” Nina says to the rest of the team later, like they aren’t the mostly-girl odds and ends of the NCAA, the ones nobody wanted and nobody expected to survive, let alone win.

“Oh, is that all?” Dan asks, but she’s grinning.


End file.
